Epic For Our Generation: The Social Network

As a film buff, rarely does the opportunity present itself to watch movie history being made.  It seems we're always looking back at how the great artists of the medium transformed larger-than life characters, fictional and historic, into generational icons.  In the early forties Orson Welles gave us the epic Citizen Kane, the dramatized story of how William Randolph Hurst changed the world with his media empire.  In the seventies, Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola brought us The Godfather, the fictional tale of a mafia family that changed our culture and film forever.

In 2010, I'm comfortable saying we're witnessing a film of equally Shakespearian epic influence.  Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher have just given us The Social Network, the story of Mark Zuckerberg, the invention of Facebook, and all the glory, betrayal, and world-changing implications that went with it.

The film begins with the most crackling and engagingly tone-setting opening scene since Inglourious Basterds, an exchange between Zuckerberg and his girlfriend in a Harvard bar where we get our first look at the disconnect between his intellectual genius and emotional ineptitude.  Jesse Eisenberg's take on the social media magnate is both amazing and surprising.  For those who saw him in Adventureland and Zombieland, this is not the same awkward, fumbling Eisenberg.  Here we have a performance of  conviction and nuance, and one that should take him to the Oscar stage in early 2011.  Don't be surprised if he's sharing the spotlight with Sorkin (for a brilliantly barbed script that reads like a verbal knife-fight), Fincher (for directing this visual tour-de-force) and especially Justin Timberlake for his always-surprisingly-awesome contribution as Sean Parker, the Napster pioneer and catalyst for the biggest swings and betrayals of the story.

The nonlinear timeline may be a bit tough to follow by those not as familiar with the method or story, but basically the movie follows the origin legend of Facebook simultaneously with the two lawsuits that were filed after its inception.  Legal conversations in stuffy boardrooms have never been more enthralling than with Zuckerberg interjecting his brand of vitriolic sarcasm and emotionless contempt.

With the Halloween season underway and so many great movies already in theaters, I must insist that you put them aside if you haven't yet seen this instant classic, if for no other reason than to be able to tell your grandkids you were there to see it in theaters.  A+